# How to deal with refusal of editing?

The asker of this question is refusing edits made to his post and he rolls back to previous version, saying he does not need edits to his post. It has been discussed that pictures should be replaced with MathJax.

What should we do about it? Should we simply talk to him and convince him the edit is necessary, or do something like banning him from rollback, or something else?

By the way, the debate on the edits of that post is ongoing as of now, and the asker is being rude in the debate.

• I see signs of stubbornness, but not of rudeness. – Michael Greinecker Jan 9 '18 at 17:44
• @MichaelGreinecker There was a comment by the asker (now deleted) showing some degree of rudeness as I see, but anyway, it is the problem that he rolls back and may probably keep doing so. – edm Jan 9 '18 at 17:53
• edm, there are comments and edits there by moderators, after the 50 minutes ago of your initial question here. So, your meta question has worked, about as well as the site permits – Will Jagy Jan 9 '18 at 18:00
• @edm I took a look at the two deleted comments before writing my comment here. – Michael Greinecker Jan 9 '18 at 21:57
• I think flagging the question for moderator attention, noting that there's an edit war going on, would generally be a quicker way of getting something done than posting here on meta. – Gerry Myerson Jan 11 '18 at 10:03
• @GerryMyerson So in general, if something goes wrong and I don't know how to handle, I should flag for moderator intervention? – edm Jan 11 '18 at 10:12
• The question, edm, is whether it's something users can help with, or whether it's something only moderators can handle. Users can't stop someone from rolling back edits – only moderators can do that (or threaten to take serious action if the person persists). – Gerry Myerson Jan 12 '18 at 5:43

## 1 Answer

First, answering the general question, I agree with Gerry: this seems like a perfect case for flagging for moderator attention.

Now, specifically in this case: I think the issue has been dealt in a very efficient and clean fashion. People pointed out why posting pictures instead of MathJax is a bad idea, and the user agreed after some while. However, I think it is worth pointing out that while the OP was being stubborn, he was not being blindly stubborn (at least to me). He had a point: namely, if the only advantage of using MathJax instead of images is "searchability", then the fact that he put the formula in the title should cover that (the aesthetical argument is also a little subjective and, although obvious for us, may be dismissed by a new user/by a user who doesn't know MathJax). The degree of validity of this point is questionable, sure, but he had an argument, and not a tantrum of the sort "Don't edit my question. I don't like it". Luckily people were quick to point out several other reasons, and he acknowledged them.

As a last point I would like to touch, I don't know if I agree that the main reason for preferring MathJax is searchability. The reason for this is that I personally never search for a question/answer using formulas. The times I tried, it was very ineffective. The points raised by Jyrki and also the point raised by rob that "it is easier to edit" (most of them are not in the discussion link you provided) seem to be closer to the reality and to the practical benefits.

• Another crucial point in preferring a plain text rather than an image: somewhere out there, i.stack.imgur.com can be blocked due to sharing the domain of a popular image-sharing site (at least it happened on my office, but got resolved after I requested that specific domain to be white-listed). – Andrew T. Jan 13 '18 at 18:49
• If you use approach0.xyz/search rather than math.SE's own search engine, then searching by formulas becomes much more effective. – Hans Lundmark Jan 15 '18 at 18:22
• Agreed; that certainly wasn't a tantrum. I know what a tantrum about edit refusals looks like, and that wasn't it. – Wildcard Jan 23 '18 at 1:12